


I Will Do Right By You

by sirfeit



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Sanctum (The 100), murphy king of sanctum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:07:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24246991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirfeit/pseuds/sirfeit
Summary: Missing scene between seasons 6 and 7. Murphy has anxiety about being a leader and seeks comfort.
Relationships: John Murphy/Raven Reyes
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	I Will Do Right By You

**Author's Note:**

> this fan fiction brought to you by my silk pusheen bath robe and slugcities (blueparacosm)'s excellent meta on twitter (here: https://twitter.com/slugcities/status/1248456319343816708)

Here's the thing: Murphy can sleep basically anywhere. Harper used to tease him back on the Ring about how he always slept in a curled-up ball, but look, the Ring was fucking cold. Felt like he was never gonna get warm again up there. Cryosleep was like that, too, felt like being dead, but of course he doesn’t remember a lot of that. On a planet, like this? There’s an atmosphere, which means warmth is -- an option. He can sleep sitting at a table, he can sleep on a cement floor, on the forest floor, he can sleep standing up, catching brief moments of unconsciousness without falling over. All he needs is a pocket of time where nobody will bother him, and a lucky break with nightmares. Usually he’s too tired to dream, or he doesn’t remember them.

Yeah, okay, yeah. He’s having trouble sleeping now. That’s the twist, give yourself a pat on the back for figuring it out, and also, fuck you.

Not to be a fucking princess -- full offense, Clarke -- but the bed is too soft. And too big. And there aren’t enough blankets. He wants -- he wants _comfort_ , and bizarrely, there’s none of that here. They’ve put Emori in another room, because Daniel and Kaylee Prime were brother and sister, not lovers, and he’s expected to have this entire huge room all to himself. He’s a ghost in this room -- barely himself, but not enough somebody else. The blankets are unfamiliar against his skin. And he usually -- he sleeps shirtless, most of the time, but they’ve given him silk pajamas to wear, and he wasn’t going to say no, and he’s --

This is what he wanted. This is what he _wanted_. The king -- and he is the king now, with Russell gone, with all the other Primes dead, he’s the one they will look towards. Even with Bellamy’s meddling, his truth-telling -- people don’t want the truth. They want to feel good. They want to feel in control, or they want the illusion of control, or they want their lives to have had some meaning, or they want it to be worth it. Or they want to belong. And he isn’t going to -- this isn’t something he can slither out of, not unless he wants to go back to the woods, leave all this behind.

Fuck.

Here’s the thing.

He is maybe having a little bit of a moral crisis.

This is why he can’t sleep.

It is also a little bit the bed’s fault, for being too big. Let him put a little of the blame on something else, okay! Can’t shoulder all of this, goddamn.

He rolls out of bed. He searches, a little blind, in the dark, for his robe. The robe is silk too. He expected it to be -- fuzzy, like something Bellamy would have worn on the ring. But instead it’s nice, and cool against his skin, and there’s a little sash that he ties around his waist. A flail at the light switch reveals that the robe is dark blue, just like his cape. Thematic. Dramatic. _Fancy_.

His face is bare except for The Scruff, and honestly maybe he should think about shaving it. But it looks good! He thinks it looks good. Look, it’s been a long life with this face, and The Scruff kind of hides it.

He wants comfort. He wants familiarity. He wants [I think the princess is dead and the king will be soon, so who is gonna lead these people? that’s right. me.] the power that comes with this position, the safety afforded to him. The ability to wander this huge castle at night, unencumbered.

There are big pockets in his fancy robe. He doesn’t have anything to put in them except for his hands.

He takes the stairs one level down. He thinks Emori is probably sleeping. She’s -- there’s not as much pressure, on her. She -- Kaylee -- was against the Atonement Protocol, or whatever the fuck that was, or means, or is. Gas, and the sky was green, and he shouted, and Zev kissed him. Gabriel explains things to him sometimes. Does he retain any of that information? Some of it! Look, he is not smart. He is not smart, he is not good, he is not trustworthy. Other people tell him these things. So why should he have -- why should he --

Bellamy has a bedroom, here. But Bellamy already took the higher course and is in the woods with Echo, and Gabriel, and Octavia. Having an adventure. Doing adventure things. Figuring out the mystery of the planet.

Mysteries don’t mean much to Murphy. Honestly? Who cares who did it? Just move on from the murder, they probably deserved it anyway. Mbege did. And nobody ever solved that mystery.

Anyhow. So Bellamy’s the best one of them. Of the seven of them. But he’s not here right now, and this isn’t Bellamy’s door.

He knocks, soft, not knowing what he’ll do if she doesn’t answer. Yeah, there’s your second twist. Who’s he got left? Monty and Harper are both dead. Echo’s in the fucking woods, and she barely knows how to be comforted, much less to offer it. Clarke was better off as a ghost, as a legend. Emori will -- Emori ---- She’s asleep. He doesn’t want to bother her. He didn’t check, but he doesn’t -- Emori knows exactly how to lie to him. Years of practice.

So.

She answers the door.

She is --

Look, everyone knows that Raven is beautiful. You don’t have to tell him that. But she looks -- sleep-roughened, like this. Her hair is different; she wears it down all the time now, instead of in that high ponytail. And it has like -- _color_ to it, or something. He doesn’t ask questions. She’s wearing a -- bra, and boxers? It’s -- he’s seen her in worse on the Ring. At least she’s bathed in the last 24 hours.

She doesn’t look like she’s been sleeping.

“Hey,” he says.

“Dumbass,” she says, and opens the door wider, and then. “It’s late.”

“You’re awake too,” he accuses, and then, an afterthought, a stab of sympathy: “Is your leg bothering you?”

“They have painkillers on Sanctum,” she tells him, haughty, an admission and a relief. “Why’d you come to me and not Emori?” she asks, getting to the point. “Isn’t she on your floor?”

“She knows how to make me feel better,” is what he says, which is true, of both of them: they know just what to say to avoid pain. And it’s kept them alive. But it also keeps them apart.

She nods, and he takes that as permission to sit down on her bed. The chair by her desk is covered in clothes already. There’s no other place to sit. She comes and sits next to him, their knees nearly touching. He isn’t wearing any shoes, but she has soft slipper-socks on. Looks. Cozy.

She moves an arm around his back and tips his head forward with her hand, rubbing a thumb over the scar where the mind drive lives. He lets her. The usual dread that he feels whenever someone is behind him, this close to him, is unavailable for comment. “Did it hurt?” she asks, soft.

“It stung,” he says. “But not for long.” She’s thinking about Abby, and he’s thinking about the way his face stung when she slapped him, and he’s -- A lot of choices led him here, a lot of little choices, and a couple big ones, and he wants. He did not come to speak of the dead. “Immortality _and_ morality?” he asks, turning her lesson on its head.

“You’re worried about ruling Sanctum?” she asks, and she takes her hand back, and he misses the warmth. “You think you’re king shit now, huh?”

“Shut up,” he says, and feels the heat in his cheeks. And then he hears himself say, without deciding to do it: “Emori used me as bait. To save Clarke.” And he hears the bitterness in his own voice, and he’s -- ashamed of it. _I will love you forever, even if we die today._

“Well, it turned out okay,” Raven points out. “And Clarke is --”  
  
Murphy cuts her off. “ _Clarke isn’t family_ ,” he snarls, and he feels the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. Angry, he wipes at his face. “Whatever,” he says. “She was dead, as far as I knew. I was trying to make _all of us_ immortal.” All seven of us. All -- five of us.

“You didn’t ask,” says Raven, sharp.

Okay. Well. Is that a good point? Maybe. Fuck you, Raven. “I’m just saying,” he says, knowing that he sounds -- pathetic. “If Monty and Harper were immortal I wouldn’t have to think about them being dead all the time.”

“You think you’re the only one who misses them?”

“I’m the only one doing something about it!”

“Why does my grief have to be a performance for you?” Raven asks, and she’s -- he made her cry. Great! Now they’re both crying!

He tries to -- she doesn’t mean to cry, he tears up all the time and nobody ever makes a big deal out of it. “You remember the last time I had power?” he asks, instead. There isn’t a good answer to her question, anyway.

“No,” she says, because she doesn’t, because _she wasn’t there_. What a concept. Of course she’s heard the story; he’s heard Monty summarize “life on Earth with the 100” enough times during Family Story Time or whatever, but she doesn’t catch the reference.

“Last time I had power, they lynched me,” he says. “And maybe I wasn’t good with it, maybe I was a little mad with it. But what’s stopping me from --”

Raven holds up a hand, and he stops talking. “There’s no noose here,” she says, and he is certain it is meant to be a comfort, until she continues: “you’d be burned alive, I think.”

And he laughs, unexpected, and she gives him a little smile. “Not as reassuring as you think, Reyes,” he tells her, and that’s a real smile now. “It’s just that -- I don’t have to be afraid of it, anymore, right? Getting hung, or burned alive, or anything. Like, it might be painful, but I’d wake up again, eventually, right? It’s just -- the stuff that comes with it, that’s scary.”

“Your coronation’s tomorrow, huh?” Raven asks, wry, even though that isn’t really what’s happening: Daniel Prime is already king. He’s a familiar face, technically. Sort of. Anyhow, they’re making him sit down and have his portrait taken, except not _taken_ because they don’t have that kind of technology. They’re having his portrait painted. Clarke-who-is-sort-of-Josephine is supposed to do it.

“The -- I’m gonna fuck it up.” The responsibility. The _weight_ of it.

“You’re not gonna fuck it up,” says Raven, derisive.

He is -- startled by it. Her faith in him. Her certainty. “Why?” he asks.

“You’re smart when you want to be,” Raven says, sounding like she’s really going to Get Into It, which is big from a person who called him a dumbass less than ten minutes ago. “You’ve been around good and bad leaders all your life. You’ve seen who chooses who lives and who dies, and you’ve learned from them. From Jaha, from when you went into the desert; I saw how much Jaha admired you, how much he saw your potential. You stole from me to give to a sick kid -- you’re repeating your parents’ mistakes, but you learned from them.” Murphy is -- but of course. The goddamn City of Light is always coming back to bite him. All those shared memories. Embarrassing. “You maybe shouldn’t be in charge of the delinquents, but here? This is just a nice little farming society recovering from years of an oppressive regime. You’re from Farm station, right?” He nods, although he barely remembers it; it’d be more accurate to say that he’s from Prison station. “You can relate to them, like that. You said -- you told Jaha that a place where everyone is accepted sounds like a fairytale, but you were willing to cross the world to find it, and I think maybe you did, on the Ring, when you let yourself.” A shrug, and she breaks eye contact, looking away for a second. “You could create a place like that here, for them. You could do right by them. And you won’t have to worry about being burned alive at the stake -- if you do right by them, they’ll do right by you. Alright?”

His mouth is dry. His hands are clammy. He feels -- he feels -- Nobody has ever said so many nice things about him at once. “Yeah?” he says, wanting her to -- go on. Wanting more for her to stop.

“And you don’t have to do it alone,” she says, a little softer, less intense. “You’ll have your family behind you. Spacekru, remember?”

“Yeah,” he says. “That -- that all, Raven?” The use of her first name is -- a little too intimate for his tongue, but he goes for it anyway.

That isn’t all, because she takes his hand, squeezes it, and darts across for a quick kiss to his cheek. “That,” she says, like it’s a point of reference. “and because you look cute in the cape.”

He is -- he is -- very warm. “The bathrobe doesn’t have the same effect?” he quips, incredibly stupid. Maybe he should be -- kissing her back, or touching her, or maybe the moment’s passed, and he missed it.

“Go back to bed,” she tells him. “Don’t let all that get to your head.”

“Can I stay?” he asks, abrupt, and he’s burning all over again. “I just -- being alone, and it’s a big castle --”

“Oh, are you scared?” Raven teases. “Poor baby,” she mocks, but she throws the blankets aside. “It’s big enough for both of us.”

He settles, easy, with her next to him, breathing the same. They’ve done this before, on the Ring, and it’s familiar in a way that this planet has never felt to him.

He thinks of the people that live here, newly ‘adjusted’, used to tithing their resources away to a cruel and uncaring god. He thinks of the girl back at the Ark, suffering from radiation poisoning. Redistributing the capital. Who matters most in a society? The common person. And he will -- he will do right by them.  
  
This time, he sleeps easy.

**Author's Note:**

> i have not written heterosexuals since i was nine, so i hope this was passable
> 
> anyhow, MURPHY KING OF SANCTUM: KING SHIT
> 
> i will read and reply to all of your comments and i will treasure each kudos for upwards of twenty-five minutes
> 
> oh, also I made a playlist! please listen to it: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3mzjbbwM0RpmkAvxdtGf0G?si=0wjlIo3qSSiNzw2LSeqo7w


End file.
